Josephn Holston is an American painter and printmaker who works from his studio in Takoma Park, Maryland. His cubist abstractionist style has evolved over a career spanning more than forty years. His art has since been widely exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the United States and internationally, and is included in numerous collections. These include the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Phillips Collection, the Georgia Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the Federal Reserve Board, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library at the University of Texas.
Holston’s monumental visual narrative Color in Freedom: Journey along the Underground Railroad, has toured for many years, including an exhibition at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The Color in Freedom Experience, an educational program developed around the exhibition, was the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the Color in Freedom etchings suite is included in the collection of the Library of Congress.
Holston’s has also been seen in other traveling exhibitions, including: African American Art since 1950, and Convergence: Jazz, Films and the Visual Arts. The screen print of his painting Letter from Birmingham Jail, commemorating the dedication of the Martin Luther King National Memorial in Washington, D. C., is in the collections of the Library of Congress and the Federal Reserve Board. The Smithsonian Museum of American History featured Holston’s screen print Jazz as the official poster commemorating Jazz Appreciation Month in 2014.
